Everything about Mervyn Leroy totally explained
Mervyn LeRoy (
October 15,
1900 -
September 13,
1987) was an
Academy Award-winning
American film director,
producer and sometime
actor.
Biography
Born to
Jewish parents in
San Francisco, California, his family was financially ruined by the
1906 earthquake. (His paternal grandfather owned a successful San Francisco department store that was destroyed in the quake; the store was heavily insured, but the insurance company went bankrupt in the aftermath of the earthquake.) To make money, young Mervyn sold
newspapers and entered talent shows as a singer. Through this he worked his way into
vaudeville. When his act broke up, he and his cousin,
Jesse Lasky, went to
Hollywood.
LeRoy worked in costumes, processing labs and as a camera assistant until he became a gag writer and actor in
silent films. His first directing job was in
1927's
No Place to Go. When his movies made lots of money without costing too much, he became well-received in the movie business.
In
1931 he directed the gangster epic
Little Caesar, launched
Edward G. Robinson into stardom and LeRoy's career was made. In
1938 he was chosen as head of production at
MGM. It was his doing that the studio made
The Wizard of Oz. He was responsible for discovering
Clark Gable,
Loretta Young,
Robert Mitchum and
Lana Turner.
In the
1950s LeRoy directed such musicals as
Lovely to Look At,
Million Dollar Mermaid,
Latin Lovers and
Rose Marie. He moved to
Warner Brothers, where he was responsible for such famous films as
Mister Roberts,
The Bad Seed,
No Time for Sergeants,
The FBI Story and
Gypsy.
He was nominated in
1943 for
Best Director for
Random Harvest. and also in
1940 as the producer of
The Wizard of Oz. In addition, he received an honorary
Oscar in
1946 for
The House I Live In, "for tolerance short subject", and
the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in
1976.
LeRoy retired in
1965 and wrote his autobiography,
Take One, in
1974. He died in
Beverly Hills, California and was interred in the
Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in
Glendale, California. He has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street.
Partial filmography
Further Information
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